DEXTER
Dexter, is a Collaborative project that took place during the Ontario lockdown of Spring 2021. The project came about from the need to push away from the roles set by the notion of commission between musicians and visual artists. A relationship deemed non-collaborative by both the member’s of Teddy’s Atlas and Justin LaGuff. The title, as well as the track, is meant to represent a memorial of a dog of the same by the band.
Picking up from the leftovers from Teddy’ Atlas latest album, to be released later in the year, a long-winding track called Dexter is given new context within the space of an installation, in which accumulates and collapses under itself. Both characteristics associated with LaGuff’s recent development as a printmaker, in which compromised reproductions of work are used as source material to either cobble together or erase. It is a logic that underlines the installation that literally piles projected footage (taken from a smart phone) and placing them on their side. The footage is also made transparent and set to a burn effect; the video material is not merely displaced, it builds a kind of ugly tone, with equally abject tints.
The clips document the happenings of the band’s bassist, Trevor Cooke, in which they wandering forest trails, concrete bridges over railroads and parking lots. Cooke also engages with these specific-sites as a means to cast objects out. Beer is immediately spat out, a chair is thrown to a wall, and a guitar petal is set on fire. Cooke even casts themselves out into foliage of the forest trail. It is ridiculous, but oddly enough, is not out of line for what they become in the final installation.
The titular track, Dexter, plays (via boom box) alongside the projection, harmonizing the video into a dreamy veil of noise. If that was not enough, found shield-glass is held right up to the projector lens, in which the material twists and circles light over the projection and boom box.
To come out of the installation, a very short series of images (there’s just three) were taken from a smart phone. Cropped, the projection into a square and flattened into a collage. From an earlier attempt of the video, the audio was used as material towards a second track created by the band. Both the second track and Dexter will be featured on streaming services. Which would be accompanied by track art made from drawings by Cooke and edited by LaGuff.
dexter - first video attempt
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JUSTIN LAGUFF
Instagram @jlaguffJustin LaGuff is an undergradute student at the University of Guelph completing a BA with Honours in Studio Art. Past experience includes completing an OCAD in Graphic Design at Loyalist College. Their practice is primary process-based and brings together drawings, collage, printmaking, cartooning, graphic design, and zines. It can be described as bold, colourful, cumulative, generative, and fixated on noise within flatness and unreal space.
Their work has been featured worldwide in publications like the Ontarion, Klub Zin, Pallor Pink, and Radical Moisture Press’ Umbrella Policy.
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TEDDY'S ATLAS
Spotify Teddy's AtlasWe are Teddys Atlas, Guelph Ontario’s own Indie Punk/ Grunge Band. We have been been a band since 2017, first as a solo recording project by our singer/guitarist, Chris Sharland, and then later as a full band with the addition of our drummer, Adam Brown and more recently, our bassist, Trevor Cooke. Our sound harkens back to an age of forgotten 90s grunge and punk bands, combining Fuzzed out, groovy rhythms, with manic vocals, heavy drumming, and powerful, emotionally charged lyrics.
Chris has several self recorded records out on our Bandcamp, and two with the band, one live off the floor album called “Live from the Convenience Store”, and one EP called “Laugh! Cry! Die!”, the latter of which has received college radio-play on the east coast and southern Ontario.
